World champions: Business students win international ERPsim competition

Escanaba senior Nicole Ladouceur, left, Taylor senior Ashley Hall, and Washington Township senior Ryan Vanneste compete internationally during the final round of the 5th International ERPsim Competition Thursday in Grawn Hall. Four students from the College of Business Administration placed 1st in the competition that tested the students logistics, money management and inventory levels by running a pretend company.

They found themselves out-competing nine other teams, including teams from Purdue University and Universitas Islam Indonesia, in a simulated, high-stress business environment at the competition, hosted by the ERPsim Lab in Montreal.

“It’s an amazing feeling to be named a world champion,” Vanneste said. “We’ve been training and getting used to the program for about five months now, going above and beyond we probably needed to, but it paid off.”

The team competed in a five-round game in which each team would use software provided by the SAP University Alliance and Informational Management Institute to run a mock company with six products. The rounds were split into 10 days, each “day” lasting about 1-2 minutes each, with a few minute breaks in between the rounds.

They were able to control every aspect of running a business through one interface, including shipping products to stores, changing the prices of their products and monitoring market sales and pricing.

Each member had a specific task, but they were interchangeable, so each team member could do every job at any time.

CMU finished in first-place in every round except the first, earning the team members the tile of "World Champions" and a $500 scholarship.

“It took a lot of dedication for them to get here,” McCann said. “They won every single qualifying round before this, so they definitely deserve to be where they are at.”

Primeau said the team will have another go at it next year.

“We’ll all be here for another year, so I think we’ll all go back in and try to win again,” he said.